Never Say Goodbye
by Fenmir
Summary: "I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever," I confess. "OK," she agrees, to my surprise.  I smile happily. "Then you'll allow it?"  "I'll allow it."


_I was listening to this song.. and I was just struck by how much it reminded me of the roof scene in CF. _

_Disclaimer: I'm not Suzanne Collins. I'm nowhere near as awesome as Suzanne Collins. So, with that said…_

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It's the sunlight streaming through the windows that wakes me. I blink my eyes rapidly, my mind still clouded with sleep. Then it all comes back. It's the second-to-last day before we are thrown into the arena. It's almost my last 'happy' morning with Katniss. I pull her a little closer and kiss the top of her head gently. She snuggles into me and sighs. I smile sadly at her as she stirs again.

"Mmmm," she murmurs, as her eyes flutter open. Her eyes meet mine and the corners of her lips twitch up into a smile. I grin mentally. True smiles from her are so rare I treasure them almost as much as 'real' kisses.

"No nightmares?" I ask lightly, guessing the answer.

"No nightmares," she confirms. "You?"

"None, I'd forgotten what a real night's sleep feels like," I say.

_If I could take this moment forever  
Turn the pages of my mind  
To another place and time  
We would never say goodbye_

We lie there for a while, in no rush to begin our day. Tomorrow night will be the televised interviews, so Haymitch and Effie will probably spend today torturing, err, coaching us. Honestly, I'm not sure why we need it. We're still pretty used to the stuff from our Victory Tour, so it's not like last year, when we were both completely unprepared to be interviewed on national television.

As I am thinking this the red headed Avox girl comes in and gives Katniss a note from Effie. She scans it quickly and looks up, her eyes happy.

"They've decided that, due to our recent tour, both she and Haymitch have agreed we can handle ourselves adequately in public. They've canceled the coaching sessions!"

"Really?" I ask, feeling prophetic. I take the note from her hand and examine it. "Do you know what this means? We'll have the whole day to ourselves."

"It's too bad we can't go somewhere," she says wistfully.

"Who says we can't?" I ask, grinning at her, an idea already forming in my head.

_If I could find the words I would speak them  
Then I wouldn't be tongue-tied  
When I looked into your eyes  
We would never say goodbye_

The roof. We order a bunch of food, grab some blankets from the foot of the bed, and head up to the roof for a day long picnic in the flower garden that tinkles with wind chimes. We eat. We lie in the sun. Katniss snaps off hanging vines and uses her knot tying skills to weave nets and work on her knots. I sketch her, memorizing every infinitesimal detail about her. The way her brow furrows as she concentrates on her knots. The way she smiles, biting her lip like she's trying to hold back laughter, whenever I catch her eye and make a weird face at her.

Around one o'clock she gets bored with her knots and grabs an apple from the huge basket in front of us. She studies it for a minute, turning it round and round in her hands, before she gives me an impish look.

"Katniss what are you-"I stop as she suddenly flicks her wrist and the apple leaves it. Instead of soaring over the roof and disappearing towards the ground, as I'm expecting, it hits the force field and bounces back, almost taking my head off.

"Katniss?" I ask, perplexed.  
"You're supposed to catch it, silly." She says, her lips pursed in an effort to keep from laughing at me. She seems to be spending a lot of today trying not to laugh at me.

"Oh," I say, playing with the apple, tossing it back and forth from hand to hand. "Like this?"

Before she has time to react the apple has left my hand and is bouncing off the force field, flying towards her. Her hand flicks out and catches it just as it is about to past her.

"Exactly like that." 

_If I could stop the moon ever rising  
Day would not become the night  
Wouldn't feel this cold inside  
And we'd never say goodbye_

By late afternoon we are done with this, and she is lying with her head in my lap, making a crown of flowers, while I fiddle with her hair. I tell her I'm practicing my knots, an excuse I know she can see right through, but in reality I'm just enjoying playing with her hair. She's never let me play with it like this before, and for some reason I'm enjoying it immensely. I'm so lost in thought, mostly about Katniss, that I don't realize my hands have stopped until her voice breaks through my thoughts.

"What?" she asks, looking at my curiously.

"I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever," I confess. And I do. Here, with Katniss, it's so peaceful and quiet. This is what my heaven looks like. And I'm so glad I've gotten a few hours of it before I die.

"Okay."

I smile happily. "Then you'll allow it?" I am surprised that she's OK with that comment. Most of the time, when I say something like that, all her barriers against love go up and she turns into the Katniss who tries not to feel anything.

"I'll allow it," she says, as my hands go back to playing with her hair.

_I wish that our dreams were frozen  
Then our hearts would not be broken  
When we let each other go..._

She has drifted off. I smile down at her. She looks so much more peaceful when she sleeps. There's the faintest hint of a smile playing around her lips. The worry lines that crease her forehead have smoothed out. She doesn't look like the Katniss who has single-handedly kept her family alive for years. She doesn't look like the Katniss who won the Games last year. She just looks like Katniss. Not the Katniss the capitol is portraying her as, not the Katniss her family needed her to be. There is just Katniss.

I glance up and see the sun has just started to set. She'll probably want to see this. I gently rouse her so she can see it too.

"I didn't think you'd want to miss it," I say. It's spectacular. I find myself wishing I could take the time to study this sunset, so I could try to paint it. All the hues together, combined with the skyline of the capitol… It is magnificent.

"Thanks," she says, leaning against me. I curl my arm around her shoulder and we sit there. By unspoken agreement neither of us gets up to go and join the others for dinner. We wait a few minutes, but no one comes to summon us.  
"I'm glad. I'm tired of making everyone around me so miserable," I say. "Everybody crying. Or Haymitch…" I don't need to continue, because we both know that Haymitch is probably having the worst time of everyone, except me and Katniss. Because last year is the first year he managed to get someone out of the Games alive, and now he has to send both of us back to the arena. He's not a big one for emotions, but I think we've grown on him.

We stay there till bedtime, watching the stars come out. Neither of us wants to leave this day behind, but we must. So we slip quietly down to Katniss's room.

_If I could steal this moment forever  
Paint a picture-perfect smile  
So our story stayed alive  
We would never say goodbye_

We're awakened in the morning by Katniss's prep team. The sight of Katniss and me sleeping together is too much for the one who has died her skin pea green, because she bursts into tears right away.

"You remember what Cinna told us," the one with spiky blue hair and golden facial tattoos says fiercely. The green one nods and goes out, sobbing.

I hug Katniss once, before leaving to go to my room. I require much less work than she does, so I still have a few hours to myself before my team comes in. So I paint. Luckily, the capitol has provided me with some canvasses, paintbrushes, and a multitude of paints.

Over the new few hours I paint all my feelings into one painting, not stopping to really realize what I'm painting, just focusing on each smaller component as I paint, instead of the larger picture. I paint Katniss as she looked asleep yesterday. I paint her tossing the apple at the force field. I paint us watching the sunset. I paint her practicing her knots.

When I'm done I step back from my work and study it. I think I've done a good job, though no painting can ever do Katniss justice.

This is what I will hold onto in the coming days; this one, perfect, beautiful day. Because nothing they can ever do to me will take away the memory. They can take my paintings, my paints, my baking, my home; they can rip me from my family and my district and force me to participate in their games. They can take my life. But they can never, ever, take away the fact that I had one day of heaven.

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_Well, I've read this multiple times and I'm not sure whether it's any good or not… So love it? Hate it? Please drop me a review anyway! Reviews get virtual cookies _

_But, please. Constructive criticism is WONDERFUL. Anything constructive you have to say to help me improve my writing is great. Please don't rant at me. _

_Thanks for reading! _


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